Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday January 13, 2010 @03:55AM
from the may-the-force-eventually-be-with-you dept.

MTV's Multiplayer blog reports on comments from BioWare employee Sean Dahlberg, which indicate that they are aiming to release the game in spring 2011. He said, "While we have not announced a specific date, we can confirm that we are targeting a spring 2011 release for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We've got a lot of exciting updates and reveals planned throughout 2010, including the first-ever hands-on testing for the game. ... We can't wait to share more about the game with you as we progress through the year, so make sure you stay tuned to the official website for details." Recent posts to the game's developer blog provide details on the Imperial Agent and the Jedi Knight. They also released a video which gives insight into their design process for the Dark Side.

Having played those games back then, I personally would have given preference to X-Wing over Wing Commander 3. Not in story, but just in raw gameplay. Both were good games though. I did REALLY like Wing Commander Privateer though which was a more open ended pirate/trading game in the spirit of Elite.

I must say though that as far as combat and story went, I much preferred Descent Freespace over either X-Wing or WC. Very engaging story and good engine.

Hear hear! Freespace was the last great space combat game. It is one of the few games where you basically spend the entire game getting your ass kicked and retreating. Not that being a Neo/Frodo/teh one/etc that runs around kicking ass isn't fun, but being a small fry running for your life is a nice change of pace. Freespace 2 was pretty damn awesome in terms of game play, if less engaging in terms of story.

While by no means new, Allegiance is newer than most of the games you mentioned. It is also unusual in being a studio game that was released commercially, then later open-sourced. It is still receiving development and improvements today. While its graphics will probably always look severely dated to modern players, the gameplay is quite engaging and the engine is fairly advanced - the game runs fine on modern systems, supports high resolutions and a variety of input devices (all remappable - and note how jo

Played it and didn't like it:( Something about the circle strafing shooting didn't really sit right with me. Also, while giving it a lot of time in terms of reading/learning about it, was just still confusing for me to understand what was going on or where I needed to be when playing.

Anyway I still think the game is awesome and definitely has its place in the world.

They were both great series, really. The ancient Wing Commander games (1 & 2) were mostly a 2D affair, and they simply can't compare in depth or complexity. I believe the technology was too limited at the time to really let them open up a whole sci-fi world to the player. They did have a cartoony fun side to them, though, and were certainly enjoyable. They paved the way for the next wave of space combat sims.

However, before the really big Wing Commander game came out (WC3 with Mark Hamill), there was a

There were a large number of missions, different craft, and of course STAR WARS! Back when Star Wars was still awesome -- before the "Special Editions" and crappy prequels. Back when the three movies you bought on VHS were the same as what was released originally in the theaters. I think some Slashdotters are starting to forget how cool Star Wars was back then. To fly in an imperial fighter, chasing after Rebel X-Wings and those damn fast A-Wings, after the music kicked in was awesome.

Star Wars is still awesome. Let's ignore the fact that the much-criticized Special Editions don't actually really change anything, and that the prequels do an even better job at the point of Star Wars than the originals do (since Star Wars was always just a flimsy excuse for a plot so we could get to the good battle scenes... not to mention that I personally find "gradual, unknowing descent into evil" a hell of a lot more compelling of a story than "generic coming of age tale"). Even if we leave that aside,

For me the only thing I really liked about star wars was the ship designs, sound effects, and the fact that the jedi were fantasy sorcerers in space, with technology. Later on I kinda liked the plot a bit, but really for me it was about the world the effects team created. (Am 30 now for age reference).

In the new movies, I hate the ship designs, and sound effects were trying to be 'almost' like star wars ones. If they had just used the same ship tech or more similar design concepts it would have been better.

> not to mention that I personally find "gradual, unknowing descent into evil" a hell of a lot more compelling of a story than "generic coming of age tale"

I still think maddox did a good summary of this 'gradual' change http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/images/ep3_tot1.gif [thebestpag...iverse.net] . I think the change could have been interesting, but they totally screwed it up. You'd think most people would think twice before slaying a whole bunch of children "in exchange for a vague promise about a cure for a potential ai

Okay, you're probably not, but then I only have to assume you have no concept of someone ruining something. As in there are no amount of bad acts that, in your view, can detract from the original experience. I would assume, for example, that if you had a wonderful evening of some of the best sexual experiences in your life, only to discover that 'she' is actually a man (or your sister, or whatever), and this wouldn't detract from the exp

First, you're quite correct that I'm not joking. However, I think that first of all, your example of a great night of sex being ruined is very inaccurate. In that instance, the original experience is never coming back. However, my point is that with something like a movie, the original experience is always there at your fingertips. No one is forcing you to accept a newer version, after all. In fact, people ignoring disliked changes to a beloved piece of fiction is fairly common.

In the example of the encounter, what would exclude you from finding that person and repeating it? If knowing what you know now has no impact on the experience, then go for it. If you can't enjoy it based on what you now know, but you didn't know before, then there's that, too.

It's basically the same thing.

And, second, if there's no real difference then I suppose you're just not that interested in movies with detail. And that's okay, too.

Unfortunately WC3 is 4 CD-ROM's of data, due to the AVI files. The TIE Fighter game easily fits on one CD-ROM, though.

Indeed. X-Wing was my first game I bought on a PC. It was when my dad bought our first 486 system. It came on like 8 3.5" disks. Tie Fighter, I believe, also came on 3.5" disks. So, yeah. It would have easily fit on a single-layer CD. =) Those where the days.

I believe i bought X-wing vs Tie Fighter was on CD. But I will always remember X-wing for my first "real" experiance flying around the Death Star freely, and blowing up turrets before hitting the trench. I believe I just flew around destroying

With a couple of minor tweaks, X-Wing Alliance will run on XP. It was pretty much overlooked, but is the best example of the X-Wing flight sim series that was made. And it still plays very well, in fact. I really doesn't feel dated at all.

As for this MMOG, it will probably be like D&D Online or some rubbish. Unless it is almost entirely based upon space and hyper-spacing/warping around and ship combat, with some interactions on planets and missions as a side thing(X3 or EVE Online as examples), it wi

Lightning, choking, beating shit up. The light side wants to either get past without a fight, talk about your feelings, or avoid hurting people as much as possible. The dark side wants to fuck your wife, take your lunchmoney, and key your car.

I agree, it's too bad they didn't do more single player with it, but I'd like a cool Sci-Fi MMO too. Hopefully this will end up being it. MMOs are fun in a different way than single player RPGs. Neither is better or worse, just different and I like both. Well, there's been some good single player Sci-Fi RPGs, but no good SCi-Fi MMOs.

Also it isn't as though everything has to be an MMO. Note that since they've announced this Bioware has released Dragon Age and is going to release Mass Effect 2, both single player RPGs. It isn't as though Bioware has said "Fuck all other markets, we are MMO only!" No, they just want to get in on the MMO action. Personally, I'm very hopeful their offering will be a lot of fun.

The choice of KOTOR for the MMO also makes sense. It was done quite some time ago (they've been working on this since long before it was publicly announced) and they didn't have the Mass Effect universe to use. Plus people love Star Wars, having a popular universe helps. Lucasarts was also looking for someone to do a new Starwars MMO. They'd given the original one to Sony thinking that Sony would do a good job since at the time they had one of the few successful long running MMOs out there (Everquest). However Sony is retarded and they ran it in to the ground.

At any rate, I'm excited to see it. I like the Starwars universe and I could go form some Sci-Fi in my MMOs. I've gotten a little tired of WoW and nothing else has held my interest.

It requires a pretty hardcore mentality (death can *really* hurt) but EVE Online is easily the best Sci-Fi MMO I've seen (not coincidentally, it's also the most successful of mainstream sci-fi MMO games). It's not based on any existing world, which I consider a plus in most cases. The in-game economy and player-created content are serious components of the game, and while high-tier PvE content (requiring either some of the best ships in the game or a fleet of friends) does exist, most players I've met prefer the player-created content (either becoming an economic tycoon or building an empire in uncontrolled space - usually by taking it away from somebody else first).

Note that it's a bit short on story, so if that's what you're looking for it might disappoint. They've added more role-play elements in the last year or so (there are two major content expansions, always free, per year) but the game is really more centered on the player-generated content. On the other hand, in a way that provides a platform for much truer role-play: if you want to be a pirate, you don't choose a "pirate" class (there are no classes, really) and take "pirate" missions (you can take missions and build standing with NPC pirate organizations, but it's not true piracy as EVE sees it). Instead, you buy a ship, put some guns on it, and go find some nice industrial ship full of valuable loot and hit it. Maybe you blow it up and take what survives the explosion, maybe you simply disable its warp drive until they pay you a ransom, maybe you ransom it and then blow it up anyhow - the decision is yours. You can find other like-minded folks and build up a fleet so you can hit bigger or more protected targets. You can take over a star system by camping its stargates, you can roam through low-security space looking for careless travelers, or you can make suicide ganks in high security space (the police ships are guaranteed to kill you, but if you kill the target first and scoop it's loot before somebody else does, you can make a lot of money). Note that piracy is far from the only option, and in fact represents a fairly small portion of the population. You're also not locked into any path - you can be the CEO of your own industrial corporation, building ships and researching blueprints at your private starbase, and every now and then jump in a PvP ship and go looking for a fight. Or you can do any number of other things.

Although its player base is nowhere near that of WoW, the entire game runs on one server cluster. Everybody is connected to that cluster - there's no instancing, and your position is simply a set of coordinates - if two people go looking for a hidden NPC pirate base in the same system, they will find the same one and probably come out of warp within a few kilometers - easy combat range (compare with most MMOs, where they would end up in separate instances). The largest "fleet" structure is 255 (10 pilots per squad including a squad commander, 5 squads per wing plus one wing commander, 5 wings all under one fleet commander) and the biggest battles in EVE these days involve multiple such fleets per side.

I've tried Eve after ditching SW Galaxies. I was all ready to start off as a new pilot and when I finally got to combat I was confused... it was so BORING. It was more like a single unit RTS. I think SWG actually has much more exciting space combat where you get to actually pilot your ship and not just point and click. SWTOR will appeal to a lot of people who find Eve boring. Eve has its place, its just not for me. It is a very nice sim.

All other problems aside, and it has a great many, it is a game designed for griefers. It is designed to reward and cater to those that find fun in making life difficult for others. Well that right there is enough to ruin it for me. That's not fun for me and the only reason I play games is fun. If they don't amuse me, they aren't worth my time.

I suppose I should have mentioned that in my post since I know there are EVE head on/. and it isn't surprising one would try to sell me on it. However I've tried it,

Well, you're entitled to your opinion. I think it's ridiculous, though; there are griefers, sure, but I've seen more instances of griefing in a few hours total of looking over the shoulders of friends playing WoW than I have in a few years of playing EVE.

I readily admit that EVE isn't for everybody, and that its learning curve is steep. I disagree with your assessment of the amount of griefing, but perhaps that's because I've long since learned to avoid the more obvious traps and I spend most of my time in

I have a better question. Why does Mass Effect 2 look like a movie yet SW Online looks terrible? Both from the same company. I understand limiting graphics due to performance issues but this is just insane. The game play is a joke compared to Mass Effect, let alone the new one. Check out the cover systems in both for an example of this huge discrepancy.

Oh okay. So somehow this game is going to get a whole new engine in that year? They are showing game play already and it looks like shit. Fact is they use different engines. One is visually stunning, the Unreal Engine that powers Mass Effect and it's sequel. The other is the Hero Engine developed by Simutronics which looks like shit but knowing them it scales through the roof. Simutronics is known for having massive scalability in their engines and they have a _very_ long history with MMOs.

To answer the question, yes, engines can change rapidly. Sometimes with disastrous results, but there is a strong amount of pull on a developer to release on a 'current' engine. With the game so far away, I'd be kind of shocked if some kind of engine overhaul wasn't in the works.

Well I was disappointed in the demonstrated cover system. The graphics I can deal with but the game play looked a bit forced. Given their other work is so great I expect the same for SW:TOR. I basically answered the questions I had in the research I did for my response. It's a different engine made by Simutronics, hence the differences. I just really love the engine used for Mass Effect, and not just graphically, the game play is where it's at. It has elements I love from KOTR so I start to wonder why the K

As great as KotOR and Mass Effect was, why can't they just do KotOR 3? Why does everything always have to be an MMO these days?

Because now they can charge a lucrative subscription. With modern MMOs being loaded with instances, cut-scenes, phasing, single-player quests etc. they've managed to basically con us into paying $15 a month for an online lobby.

No dancers? No nerf herders? What are the Care Bears going to play? Tell me there's Ewoks!

Perhaps you're noting the lack of dancers, but you forget your SWG, sir. This list makes me very sad to see that they are attempting to include Jedi and non-Jedi as equivalent choices.

Very sad.

Note how SWG at least initially pretended to bridge the gulf between god-like supermen with laser swords and scrappy heroes with pistols. There were to be limits on who got to be a Jedi, and only from secret unlockable criteria, and even then you could only die once. Remember?

I would totally play an Ewok. Through for a class I would have to probably pick Jedi Knight, with dual wielding light sabers.

If you want to see a storm trooper drop a load in his battle armor, let him see an dual wielding light saber Jedi Ewok coming at him. I mean they handed the trooper's their asses using small stones, and sticks. Just imagine what they could do with proper training and equipment... the sky is the limit!

Strictly speaking, the empire and the republic overlapped for a brief period (between episodes 3 and 4). Basically, the time that Luke spent growing up on Tatooine, the old republic was falling apart, the empire was taking over, and the rebellion against the empire was forming (in roughly that order). It was also during this time that the empire (mostly Vader) was hunting down and killing the Jedi. Remember also that Episode 4 starts off mentioning that the "Rebel Alliance has won their first battle against

The Knights of the Old Republic setting is set WAY WAY before all of the movies. This was done because Lucas is a moron and they want to stay as far away from that shit as possible. The Star Wars setting is hardly the most awesome setting out there. It has massive gaping planet sized holes in it in terms of coherency. That said, whatever it lacks in terms of being good is made up for the fact that it is extremely recognizable with a large following, and it is a pretty "fun" universe. Who needs consistent technology when you have freaking laser swords and magic?

Personally, I great this MMORPG with a yawn. I am filled to the brim with skepticism that any major production MMORPG is going to be more than a grindfest with gameplay directly ripped off from Everquest 1 and Diku MUDs before that. Woo, killing shit to gain levels to kill more shit. Thanks guys, I'll stick to real drugs. At least those are fun and not so damaging to your social life.

I think at some point someone is going to grow a pair and come up with some innovative MMORPG game play in a major MMORPG production. Star Wars Galaxies was actually pretty close originally in terms trying something different. It failed to be sure, but a few failures are what it will likely take to get out of this mind numbingly dull funk that MMORPGs are in right now where they are all glorified Everquest clones. Yes, I include WoW has a glorified Everquest clone. Don't get me wrong, they do it better than Everquest, but they do it in the same way that Quake did FPS better than Doom. Different cosmetics and refinement of the formula, but they are essentially the same beast. There are other things you can do when you have a few thousand people logged into the world besides grind and do some mini games.

Mind you, I'm simply assuming a chronological setting for this based on the class list and my limited knowledge of Star Wars canon. It does sound like the game will be set further in the future (a not so very "long long time ago"?) than the KotOR games.

From what I know, this is to be set only a few hundred years after KOTOR, thousands of years before the movies.

Strictly speaking, the empire and the republic overlapped for a brief period (between episodes 3 and 4). Basically, the time that Luke spent growing up on Tatooine, the old republic was falling apart, the empire was taking over, and the rebellion against the empire was forming (in roughly that order).

Strictly speaking, you are correct but your analysis is wrong.

The Galactic Republic BECAME the Galactic Empire, essentially Palpatine renamed it at the end of the Clone Wars. By then he had already weakened the Senate, but the Senate was not fully dissolved until Episode IV. The Republic and Empire did did not exist as separate entities in any way. Some systems were rebelling between Episodes III and IV, but this was disorganized and not an alternative government.

We need to end the serie of "WoW clones", if SWTOR is anything like a WoW clone (and in some ways It will probably be) we don't need it, nor in 2011, or 2014. If it is different and really may change the scene, we need it now.. but you can have nice things always wen you need it, so maybe It will pay to wait (note that the concept of 'wait for a mmo' is broken. You just forget about it, till is released).

If we have learned one thing from 2009 is to ignore all mmos (NO EXCEPTIONS) till 4 months after relea

If we have learned one thing from 2009 is to ignore all mmos (NO EXCEPTIONS) till 4 months after release. There are too much hype on these games before release and the first months, to really tell if a game is pure garbage (and almost all are really boring games) or something that really could be interesting to play.

Don't overlook the power of the open beta, even if you have to shell out $7 to FilePlanet to get into it.

I already have forums set up where some of my friends can discuss guild/clan/party configurations and loot systems. We are already discussing lightsaber building, quest groups, times to get together etc.

We are going over the old KOTR games to figure out what crafting items will be available in game and who will craft what.

I only have a few folks atm that are all real life friends working on this, but we are very serious about this MMO.

I am concerned with jedi vs sith options but I would assume based on prior MMOs that bioware has learned that different abilities for different factions increases the development time two fold. WoW is probably the best example of what happens when you have 2 factions with 2 different sets of abilities, look at the shaman vs paladin debates from years ago.

I am figuring that we will see a lot of "grey sith" and "grey jedi" healers. (think chaotic evil, chaotic good)

There's actually lore that force users can be overcome by non force users in the books and especially in the old republic series, so this won't break canon. There is specific armor to deflect force powers by gemming them with force crystals, as there are weapons like vibroblades that are somehow charged to deflect lightsabers. So I can't imagine the nonforce users would be a waste of time as a class, on the contrary, I can see them being very effective.

You misunderstand.A game like Star Trek Online is not in the same category as The Old Republic. Star Trek Online is designed to compete with games like Aion, EVE and City of Heroes. That's their market space. The Old Republic is more ambitious. They're aiming for a game that can compete for a massive audiance. They're trying to build a game that competes with WoW. I don't think they have any dreams of supplanting WoW, but the depth and polish needed to even be considered in the same league is daunting